


God Grant Us Silence

by ArchangelUnmei



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Dark, Gen, Kink Meme, War Era, wwi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-23
Updated: 2010-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:29:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchangelUnmei/pseuds/ArchangelUnmei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Injured and left for dead by his men, France must pull himself together and make it back to friendly territory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God Grant Us Silence

He wakes up mostly upside-down and choking.

His head is pounding, his lungs are burning, and he cannot feel his legs. In his experience, this is a good thing. It means he probably still has them. Even Nations tend to be slowed down by a missing limb.

 _-Oh God, that's right, Canada stepped on a mine so one of his boys wouldn't, days or weeks or eons ago. England had to drag him back and put him back together, couldn't trust him to a human medic-_

The memory of the haggard weariness on England's face makes him groan, finally forces his eyes open. There's the faint sound of gunfire off in the distance, but it would be stranger _not_ to hear gunfire, really. There's a haze in the air, mustard gas and fresh blood steaming in the cold. A lot of it is his.

He cannot remember where he's supposed to be, where his men are, why he went down. The war burns across his body like a fever, sending his thoughts spinning away in glittering fragments that make no sense.

 _-Prussia, laughing, red eyes and a plumed hat from a hundred, a thousand years ago when they were allies and friends and will they ever be allies again, after this? "France, you make no sense!"-_

Eventually, he grows tired of staring up at the overcast, dull gray sky _\- gray like a rifle barrel before the muzzle flash -_ and decides to try and sit up. The moment he does, pain lashes along his spine, bites down into his thighs and ankles and _oh good he still has his legs after all_. It tears a scream from his throat and sends him back down into the mud, sinking into blissful darkness with the thought that now at least he knows why his men left him behind.

His legs are tangled in barbed wire.

 _-Barbed wire and poison gas and machine guns and trench warfare. It's brutal, disgusting, he hates Germany for inciting this sort of escalation, all this needless death. He never thought he'd miss Roman cavalry and English longbows-_

It's awhile before he wakes again, wounds festering rather than healing. He can feel the steady throb of the trenches, lines like lashes across his back. He groans, moving more carefully this time to investigate his situation. He'll have to get out of here sooner or later _\- he'll live until his last citizen dies, but he's wondering more and more and more lately if his time has finally come -_ and he'd rather not suffer the indignity of an English rescue.

Then a more chilling thought occurs to him. He could very well be behind enemy lines now, with the way the Germans were pushing forward, and he likes the idea of a "rescue" by Germany or Prussia even less.

It takes him hours, the sky going dark and forcing him to stop with one leg free and his hands torn but no longer bleeding because he has no blood left to give.

With the night, the gunfire stops, though now the moans and screams of the injured and dying are more audible. He wonders idly which lines he's closer to, and whose injured he's hearing, and then decides it doesn't matter.

With the night comes the cold. He can feel his blood freezing to the wire, to the ground, mud turning hard as rock and sharp as glass, crackling every time he moves. It's a long night, with only the corpses for company.

 _-But not the **longest** night, no. That came in 1793, or maybe in 1431, or quite possibly in 1349 when everyone was sick with the Plague and they all huddled together in Florence, France and England shoulder to shoulder ignoring their warring states, Bulgaria and Ottoman with Hungary between them but still being civil, all of them playing cards and drinking and pretending they weren't all coughing up blood-_

The dawn brings light but no warmth. He feels stiff as a board, as stiff as British sensibilities, but he forces himself to move, to drag himself upright and continue trying to dig the wire out of his bones.

But finally he is free, a last coil of wire grating across his wrist, cutting a new furrow in what flesh is left as though trying to hold onto him. For awhile, even though he's free, he can't move. He doesn't have the strength. He can taste decay on his tongue; too many of his boys are dead.

A stutter of gunfire somewhere nearby finally shocks him into action. He cannot walk, so he crawls, scrambling on all fours in what he hopes is the right direction. His uniform is torn and fraying, covered in mud and blood, even his hair matted with more of the same. This turns out to be a blessing, along with the deep wounds that mar his skin. If he was mortal, he'd be more than dead by now, so several times when he senses people getting too close he drops down to lay among the corpses. He just hopes that the passing German solders don't decide to put a bullet in his head, just to be sure.

 _-He passes out once or twice and dreams of scented soap and hot water and buttery croissants, and wakes to the fear of Germany's boot coming down on his neck-_

He tries to orient himself by the sounds of gunfire and shelling, but still ends up wandering his once-beautiful countryside for days. He's glad he doesn't really need to eat, because there aren't even any crops to forage, only corpses

 _-And corpses are sometimes the only food there is, and even the greatest generals will partake ravenously when they're hungry enough, and he still has nightmares when he remembers his own flesh being flayed away and someone mad whose name he can't remember whispering in his ear "My country, my darling, you will be alright, don't you want to support your children?"-_

He's almost given up hope of ever finding his way out of no man's land when he sees a scrap of color just over the next rise. He has to stare for a long time to make sure he isn't hallucinating, and thinks perhaps he's never been so relieved to see the Union Jack flying over French ground. He promises himself he will never defile that lovely, lovely flag again as he staggers towards it, knowing only that it means **safety**.

He knows there are sentries, can sense the sights of the rifles coming to bear on his chest, his forehead. Gathering the little strength he has left, he raises his ragged voice as loud as it will go to shout in cracked, French-accented English, "Mon Dieu, _don't shoot_!"

Shouts of surprise go up from behind the sentry posts. "A Frenchman! Survivor! Someone get a medic!"

But when France finally slides down into the trenches and collapses to sit with his back against the muddy wall, it's England himself who storms over carrying a field medic's kit. He stops, pursing his lips and taking in France's tattered uniform, the white bone showing through the mud on his hands and ankles, his thin bloodless lips.

"You look like hell," is all England says, crouching beside France.

 _-It's practically tradition, after a thousand years and a hundred wars, to tell the other they look like hell when they meet-_ England doesn't look relieved to see France safe, but France wouldn't expect that of him. He just lets his head fall back against the trench wall, ignoring the murmurs of the young _\- they're only children -_ soldiers around them.

He doesn't flinch when England begins carefully cleaning his shattered hands, and when England glances up he realizes France has fallen fast asleep.

 _He dreams of Gaul, of green fields and white lilies, of a time before he'd heard of Rome or knew what lay across the Channel, before he knew of blood and war._

 _He dreams of peace._

**Author's Note:**

> This is set during WWI, if it wasn't obvious from the fic itself. The title doesn't come from anywhere in particular, I just like the way it sounds and it fits the tone.
> 
>  _Roman cavalry and English longbows_ \- Gaul (the territory that would become France) fell to Rome mainly because Rome had cavalry and the Gauls had no idea how to fight them. Ditto, France got slaughtered by England's longbows during the Hundred Years War because they had no way to counter them.
> 
> 1793 - The Reign of Terror, just after the French Revolution, when many French nobles were guillotined  
> 1431 - The year Jeanne d'Arc was burned at the stake by the Church  
> 1349 - During the outbreak of Bubonic Plague that killed about a third of Europe's entire population. This was during the Hundred Years War between France and England, and also during the Bulgarian-Ottoman Wars, which prompted the other comment in that paragraph.
> 
> Cannibalism - Not based on any war or ruler in particular, but I imagine something along those lines happened a lot during the middle ages.


End file.
